Category : market timing

Disclaimer: I am not predicting the market tanks tomorrow, next week, next month or even next year. Contrary to what the media or “pundits” try to convince you — it is impossible to predict when the market will drop or what will ultimately cause it. That said, I am 100% convinced that the market will drop at some point.

In fact, at blooom – we guarantee that it will drop at some point in the future. In reality, it isn’t IF the market will drop. It is WHEN and how many times over your investing lifetime will it occur. We try to inform our clients about this as often as possible and set the expectation that market drops – although painful at the time – are perfectly normal.

The mistake average investors make most often is they take the assumption that something is wrong with the market or their portfolio and they bail out of their investments right in the midst of the market decline. They do this thinking that they are doing the “safe” thing but it is often the absolute worst thing you can do. It is a huge reason why average investors perform so horribly when left to their own devices.

So what can you do the next time the market tanks? At blooom, we advocate that our clients do these 3 things.

1. Set Your Expectations Ahead of Time

Just knowing that it is perfectly normal for the market and the value of your account to decline from time to time is half the battle.

History has repeatedly shown that the right thing to do — regardless of the circumstances causing the market decline — is to not panic, sit tight and just get through it. You probably know that the average rate of return over the stock market over the past 30, 50 whatever years is something close to 10%. Guess what, the 10% rate of return was calculated by STAYING in the market 100% of the time. Even in the last 20 years (1997-2016), the average investor return – 2.29% — has paled to that of the S&P’s 7.68% 1.

Achieving the S&P historical numbers does NOT assume that an investor had a fully functioning crystal ball. They weren’t hopping out of the market before a decline and back into the market right before it turned upwards. That rate of return assumes you left your investment the heck alone!

Start prepping your mind today — when the waters are fairly calm — for the fact that your 401k will decline in value when the market drops. This does not mean anything is wrong with your 401k, the investments, or blooom! I promise you — after 22 years of experience working with clients to help them save for retirement — if you can come to grips and expect the market and your portfolio to drop from time to time, you will put yourself in a much better position for investing success.

“In the world of investing nothing is as dependable as cycles” – Howard Marks, Oaktree Capital chairman

We want to illustrate the randomness of markets and why diversifying is a good idea.

We put together the following chart to do just that. It shows the performance of several of the major asset classes over the last 10 calendar years updated through 12/31/2016.

A Few Things About Diversification Jump Out

While US markets have rebounded strongly since the global financial crisis in 2007-2008, international markets have lagged for the most part. Unfortunately, this is causing a lot of investors to abandon their international funds or avoid them altogether. If we extended this chart back a few years further, the opposite would have been true. Another reminder that markets are cyclical. Nothing new to see here.

Poor commodities. They had their first positive year of the past six years in 2016. Even after that gain, the asset class is down around 50% since the beginning of 2011. Commodities still have a place in a diversified portfolio, but if you have been banking on the return of the gold standard, you have likely been disappointed.

Looking only at this chart, bonds seem to be a dependable source of a decent return. However, like all history, context is everything. We’ve seen a 30-plus year bull market in bonds where the 10-year treasury yield went from over 15% in the early 1980’s to around 2.5% at the end of 2016. Falling interest rates are a positive for bond prices, but they can only fall so far. The next decade will likely look different for bonds.

The Diversification Chart Teaches Valuable Investing Lessons

First, there will be up years and down years. Chasing the best performing asset class of the previous year won’t yield great results. Oftentimes, the top performing asset class one year will be near the bottom of the pack the next year, and vice versa. Other times, an asset class’ relative performance will persist (see: commodities from 2011-2015 or US large cap from 2013-2016). The point is, the future is unknowable.

If you’re relying on your (or anyone else’s) ability to time the market, you’re doing it wrong.

It is true. The stock market will tank. It isn’t a matter of IF but WHEN and HOW MANY times in your lifetime.

The sooner you can accept this and not be surprised by it, you will have joined an elite investor club. Sadly, there are very few members. Even one of history’s most prominent figures couldn’t keep his emotions in check when it came to investing. Now let me be clear about something: I am not calling for or predicting WHEN the market will tank. I just know that it will at some point.

Since the beginning of when they started measuring the aggregate prices of company stock, the market has regularly and periodically reminded investors that when things go up, they always come back down. Fortunately — so far at least — the downs have been temporary.

The Market Will Tank – A Bear Market

In fact, since the conclusion of WWII, the stock market (as measured by the S&P 500 index) has declined by at least 20%, what is typically defined as a Bear Market, a total of 14 times! (Note: there were three periods that were “only” down 19%. Forgive me, but I am still going to include them in the Bear Market list.)

Not exactly a catchy, attention grabbing headline is it? Traditionally, BREAKING NEWS headlines have implied something out of the ordinary or unexpected. But in 2016, almost anything can be breaking news, including the things that should be no surprise to us. The headline above could be completely wrong. Maybe there’s an asteroid heading right for us that I just don’t know about, or maybe I’m just unaware that the Sun is supposed to randomly burn out in the next few months. If that’s the case, your investments aren’t going to do you any good anyway. I’ve seen the movies. But in the far-off chance that those things DON’T happen any time soon, I think it might be good for us to cover something EVERY long term investor must understand. The Market goes up AND down. And it happens ALL the time. So often in fact that at some point investors saving for retirement owe it to themselves to stop paying so much attention to [insert major news network].

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen something similar to these following headlines over the years:

“Dow Rebounds 350 Points: Bull Market Marches On”
“Analysts: This Year Could Be the Best Year in Decades for Stocks”
“Risk On: Never a Better Time to Buy!”

You get the point. In a world where we now have a 24-hour news cycle, the very existence of any news outlet is highly dependent upon one thing: RATINGS. There is simply nothing better for ratings than fear and panic, which is why those first three headlines will catch more attention than the last three. It’s also why you will never hear what I’m about to tell you by watching your TV: Negativity is the lifeblood of the news.